But yeah AWA is pretty lax when it comes to badges. You'll need one for the dealer's room, artist alley, and sometimes panels. Otherwise you can just roam around and enjoy yourself. People are up and about at all hours of the night and early hours of the morning, too. Actually that's one thing I never really liked about AWA - hard to get a good night's sleep with the music and noise in the lobby. Staff is pretty chill, only issue I've really heard from them in the past is they get very strict about what they consider a 'skimpy' costume and often times ask people to cover up more than other conventions I've been to. I don't think bringing in food from the outside would be an issue, either. Usually that only becomes an issue when going to a convention in a convention hall that has their own food vendors and won't even allow the dealers to sell snacks (for example, MetroCon).